


A Ghost Story

by bnsolo



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Childhood Friends, Friendship/Love, Ghost Will, Growing Up Together, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Loneliness, M/M, Sad and Sweet, Slow Burn, sad but cute haunting ensues, will is a ghost and mike is lonely
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-02-25 21:17:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13221438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bnsolo/pseuds/bnsolo
Summary: “In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.”  - Laurie Halse AndersonSince Mike Wheeler moved to Hawkins, he has become the loneliest boy in the world. Or so he thinks. He doesn't know that he's been noticed by a ghost who used to be a boy called Will. Through Mike, Will might be able to start living again.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> my first multi-chapter byeler fic! i've been kicking this idea around for a while so it's finally time to post it. enjoy!

Will Byers first notices Mike Wheeler on a clouded, soft grey day in September. He is sat by himself, on the cool earth, in the corner of the school yard. He is crying. Silent, blank tears slip down his pale face, leaving shining trails that cool on his skin, collecting wetly under his chin. They tickle, and he wipes them away with the sleeve of his sweater. Will watches him from for a little while, watches him sit alone under the slowly moving blanket of cloud, watches him watching the other children chase each other shrieking through piles of dead, brown leaves. Will is by the strange boy’s side before he knows it, hovering uncertain by his shoulder. He dare not draw attention to himself, so he waits out of his line of sight (even though he knows, logically, that _sight_ is neither here nor there). The boy has dark hair, glossy and feathery like the wing of a blackbird. It looks soft, not that Will remembers well what _soft_ feels like any more, but this boy’s hair looks like it might feel soft. His eyes are big and dark and shiny with tears. Under the damp glowing tracks, his pale skin is dotted with freckles. Will finally plucks up the courage to stand in front of him, but those dark eyes don’t look up, they remain fixed on the pale hands curled in his lap, like white doves laid on the dark corduroy of his trousers. Will sits down cross-legged in front of him, mirroring him, resists the urge to wave his hand in front of his face. The boy looks up, slowly, and if Will’s heart had a beat it would stop, but he looks right through him at the bare black branches of the tree behind him. Will’s stomach drops.

Of course, he cannot see him. Of course. But every time someone glances his way, every time a smile seems thrown in his direction, or a pair of eyes look at the empty space he occupies without sliding past, Will gets his hopes up anyway. Even though he knows he will never be seen.

It’s okay, though. Even if this boy can’t see Will, Will can see _him,_ and though he always finds it a little voyeuristic and strange to people-watch when they have no way of knowing he’s even there, with this boy, he can’t help it. Something about his obvious loneliness, his isolation, draws Will in, and he finds himself following him to classes when the bell finally rings. He learns the boy’s name is Mike Wheeler then, when his name is called at the start of class and he answers in a quiet voice trembling with nerves. “ _Mike Wheeler,”_ Will whispers to himself, tasting the words. Remembering what it is to sit in a classroom, and wait for your name to be called, to be recognised, acknowledged, named. _Will Byers,_ he remembers suddenly. _My name is Will Byers._

Mike Wheeler sits alone at the back of the class and listens carefully to his teacher, makes neat notes in clean, rounded handwriting, and tries not to watch the clock or count down the hours, the minutes, the very _seconds_ until he can go home. Mike Wheeler hates school. It’s not that he hates the work, or his teachers, or the building, or even the people. He just hates being alone.

He doesn’t know why no-one talks to him. Maybe it’s that he’s new, that he moved to Hawkins a month into the school year when everyone had already grouped up, or just that he doesn’t know how to talk to them, that he never really learned how, but whatever the reason, Mike has no friends at school. He talks to no-one but his teachers, only looks up from his books to answer questions in class, spends recess sat cross-legged under a patch of poplars in a corner of the yard. He brings his comic books, his homework, and works or reads while the other kids play and laugh and scream and live. He goes home and it’s easier, he chats to his mom, to Nancy, to little Holly (growing more and more talkative by the day). He plays withRory and the Falcon and his other toys idly, reflecting that maybe he’s getting too old for them, but unwilling to give up the reminders of when he was younger and more carefree. He looses himself in TV, sitting up late in the basement watching Ghostbuster or Back to the Future over and over and over again until his eyes ache at the bright colours. His Supercomm sits on his desk, unused now that his friends live hundreds of miles away, gathering dust.

He drifts into school and out, day after day, growing quieter, more isolated. He even talks to his family less. His dad barely notices, but his mother asks questions with her brows drawn and her eyes full of worry, and he even catches Nancy looking at him sometimes with tender concern. It can’t be helped. If he told them what was wrong, they’d want to change things, do something to help him, and there’s nothing they can do. And if he’s hurting on the outside as well as the inside, if his nails dig little crescent-moon reminders into his arms, if the razor blades in the bathroom cabinet are starting to look good to him, then it’s better Nancy and his mom don’t know that. They’d only want to help. And they can’t help.

Then one day, he opens his locker and finds a note, a scrap of paper, torn and ragged and folded and wedged under the door.

Will watches Mike for a long while. He doesn’t know how long; time has long ago ceased to have meaning for him. But he watches him long enough to know he loves science, and he has nice handwriting, that he’s left-handed and hates broccoli. Mike brings comics to school and Will reads them with him, sat silent and undetected next to him on the grass, trying to keep up with Mike’s breakneck reading speed, occasionally tracing a non-corporeal finger over the luridly bright pictures. One day, he plucks up the courage to follow him home, feeling like a stalker, but reasoning that being dead, he should pretty much feel free to do whatever he wants with his afterlife. And if what he wants to do is watch Mike Wheeler watching movies and idly playing with toy dinosaurs and spaceships like a ten year old, well, then, who’s to say he shouldn’t? It’s there, in Mike’s basement, that Will learns about Star Wars and E.T. and the X-Men. It’s there Will sees Mike smile for the first time, sees what makes him happy; talking to his mother in the kitchen as she makes dinner, teasing his older sister as they fight over the remote control, or just curling up in the blanket fort with a torch and reading until the moonlight streams through the windows of the back door. Will does all these things with him, a silent, invisible companion, laughing as hard as Mike does at the jokes on TV, reading all his books and playing his video games alongside him. Even if Mike doesn’t _know_ he has a friend, Will tries his best to be a good one.

Friends notice things, especially dead friends who have nothing else to do but watch you go about your life. And Will quickly notices the red marks on Mike’s arms and sides. Soon, he notices how Mike grabs his arm or his side through his shirt in class, or when he’s sitting alone in the cafeteria, or at recess, digging his nails in hard, too hard. Will begins to worry. He worries more when he sees faint swirls of blood in the bathroom sink and slim, shallow cuts like cat scratches, except the Wheelers don’t have a cat. Not deep enough to leave scars. (Not yet.) Will frets uselessly for a while, distraught, the very idea of lovely, laughter-filled, clever Mike wanting to hurt himself bringing him to near-despair. Maybe it’s that, the depth of feeling, the sheer magnitude of desperation, that lets him finally do it. Will hasn’t touched anything for as long as he can remember, he supposes that’s one of the rules, that dead boys can’t touch or feel or affect the world in any way, just pass through it like wind (but even the wind can bend branches). But when Will needs to help Mike Wheeler, he finds for the first time that he can pick up one of Mike’s notebooks and rip a page from it with shaky, unused fingers. He can pick up a pencil, and scratch a message, painfully slow and hesitant, learning to act like a boy again. He can push it, unseen, through the crack in the bottom of Mike’s locker door.

Mike stares at the note. It’s written in pencil, in shaky block capitals, like its author was using their off hand. _PLEASE DON’T HURT YOURSELF MIKE._ Mike swallows shakily, glances up and down the corridor as if he expects to see someone with ‘mysterious but well-intentioned note writer’ written on their forehead. He looks down at the note. Nancy, maybe? Disguising her flowing, curly handwriting from him for….some reason. Shoving a note in his locker instead of telling their mother or talking to him herself. No. Don’t be stupid. But who else would care? Who else would notice?

He presses the note into his pocket. At times, his fingers brush it almost subconsciously, feel the paper tickle the pads of his fingers, a physical reminder. Someone out there does care. Someone did notice. Whoever they are, close enough to him to notice the marks, but unknown to him, should frighten him. But strangely, Mike already knows that whoever they are, they want to help him. Like the note is giving off good intentions, kindness, affection. _Please. Please_ don’t hurt yourself Mike. That day, for the first time, whenever his hands would usually go to his wrists, they go to his pocket instead. That night, the razor stays in the bathroom cabinet.


	2. Chapter Two

Winter turns to spring, infant leaves unfurling, pale green and translucent, from their tightly furled buds, cherry blossom blooming and raining white and pink petals, showers leaving the earth damp and rich, petrichor perfuming the town’s streets. Mike peddles to school through deep puddles, weak but determined sunlight warming him, turning to rainbows in the splashback. Holly is walking independently now, toddling happily around the house without falling or holding on to Mike’s hand. Nancy brings her friend Barb round to the house, giggling about boys as they run up to her room together, brushing past Mike, but he no longer feels the pang of jealously or the call of the razor in the bathroom cabinet like he would have a few weeks ago. He knows he has his own friend, even if he doesn’t know who they are.

The notes kept up a regular appearance after the first one. A week later, another scrap of paper, another clumsily scratched message: _I HOPE YOU FEEL BETTER._ Mike wanted to reply, somehow, to ask the author’s identity, to ask them to show themselves, to talk to him in person, but he didn’t know how; eventually he settled on writing his own note, leaving it in his locker overnight, feeling pretty stupid. But in the morning, against all odds, a reply was there. _I JU_ _ST_ _WANT TO LOOK OUT FOR YOU. I CANT TELL YOU WHO I AM BUT I DONT WANT TO SCARE YOU. SORRY – W._ Words that would have freaked any other twelve year old boy out big-time, but Mike sensed somehow that the mysterious W was sincere. He scribbled a hasty ‘thank you’ note and left it in his locker, and soon got a _YOU’RE WELCOME – W._ in reply. After a while, the notes seemed better written; grammar correct, syntax more sophisticated, handwriting steadier. Something about the way they were written was childish, immature, yet behind the times a little – Mike didn’t really know it, but subconsciously he recognised the words of another young boy his own age. The mystery didn’t bother him so much as time wore on. He was simply grateful not to be alone at last.

So now Mike races to school, eager, happy to work. His teachers notice a change; though still as quiet as ever with the other children, Mike’s schoolwork blossoms and his engagement in class increases tenfold. He even tries harder in gym class. His mother, on the cusp of worrying before Christmas, now gives an internal sigh of relief whenever her little boy comes home from school, flushed from peddling too fast, grinning from ear to ear, talking a mile a minute; back to normal at last. Nancy welcomes his jibes and constant arguing, the friendly sibling antagonism she’d never admit to having missed. Mike still spends a lot of time alone, in the basement, playing on his Atari and watching TV, but the solitude feels comfortable and kind, not soul-crushingly lonely. One day, the note is not words but a drawing, in coloured pencil, of the school yard with its bright green grass and cherry trees teeming with soft pink flowers, a carpet of petals below them. The sky is a soft blue, expertly shaded. Mike grins to himself, and tapes it up on the inside of his locker door. The next time, it’s the Millennium Falcon, hyper-realistic, flying through a star-scattered sky. In the windows Mike can just make out the figures of Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Chewbacca, carefully picked out. The pictures continue, every day a new one, castles and knights, a party of brave adventurers fighting off a horde of goblins, a tree-fort built over a vast forest, turrets and towers balanced in the branches. Mike saves every one.

Mr Clark, his Earth Science teacher, approaches Mike one day after class. Mike, still packing away, is staring at the latest picture; of the ocean he’s never seen, having lived in landlocked states all his life. He shoves it hastily in his bag as his teacher approaches the desk.

“Hi, Mr Clark.”

“Hi, Mike. Enjoy the lesson?” Mike nods enthusiastically, genuinely. “Great. Listen, I don’t know if you’re interested in this sort of thing, but I saw on your transcript that you used to be in your old school’s A.V. club?”

Mike swallows and nods again. The mention of A.V. club brought up an ache of longing for his old friends.

“Well, I was thinking of setting one up here. I don’t know if it’ll happen yet, but if I find enough interested individuals, I’ll probably be able to get funding. What do you say?”

Mike grins. “I’d love that. Thanks!”

Mr Clark watches Mike run from the classroom, bag over his shoulder. Such a bright, polite kid. But always alone. At least now, he seems to be a little happier, though just as friendless as he was at the start of the semester. Maybe if he gets a little more involved in school life, he’ll find some friends. Hopefully.

Will is sitting in Mike’s basement, his box of coloured pencils open, carefully strewn rainbow of colours scattered around him like jewels. The more he practises interacting with the world, the better he becomes – it seems strange that only a few short weeks ago, he could barely scratch out a message, and now his fingers fly across the page, creating whole universes from nothing. Muscle memory teaches him how to take the images from his head and put them down on paper, vivid as reality, and he does it all for Mike. Every day when he sees Mike’s face light up, glowing from the inside like a lightbulb when he sees the new picture, Will feels a little bit more alive. He still cannot be seen, of course, but he can draw, is strong and vital enough to drag the box of pencils from the drawer and open it, and at last he can draw again. He did this when he was alive, maybe, though he can’t remember anything else from then. His life is a blur; but thanks to Mike Wheeler, his death is as sharp as a new-developed photograph, every detail crisp and clean. He glances down at his own hand, tries to kid himself it looks a little less anaemic, a little more solid and real and here.

The sound of the back door opening startles Will. The brown pencil slips across the page and draws a jagged line to the edge of the paper. Will jumps up, pencils scattering from his lap, and considers trying to hide the pencils and the drawings before realising that floating art utensils would probably be more disorientating to Mike than a mess he could, conceivably, have made himself at some point. Will backs away as Mike comes in, praying that the mess he left on the couch will go unnoticed, though he knows it’s a faint hope at best. Mike drops his bag, glances around the room, frowns as he spots the pencils and paper, and approaches slowly, clearly thinking back to the last time he used the big box of pencils kept hidden at the bottom of his chest of drawers. His hand reaches out, trembling, to touch the picture lying on top of the discarded sheets, brushing aside the scattered pencils. A wide-eyed, dark-haired boy stares back at him from the page, pale, with a flop of straight chocolate brown hair just brushing above his brown eyes.

All Will wanted to do was see if he could remember. What he looked like, when he was alive, when his cheeks were flushed with blood and his eyes sparkled with health. Maybe he could remember his parents, his life, what happened to turn him into this hollow shade. He sketched from memory, in plain black pencil, and then added a little colour to make himself seem more real, and he’d liked the result a lot. A real human being seemed to look at him from the picture, someone full of life and joy. But now Mike is staring with wide-eyed confusion at the scribbled face of the dead boy who’d befriended him, and Will just wants to die all over again.

Mike knows as soon as he sees the picture. The clean lines, the perfect shading...it had to have been drawn by his mysterious note-writing friend. In his house, with his pencils, which should terrify him...except he somehow knows he has nothing to fear.He looks around as if he can see this invisible artist, but of course he can’t. He picks the picture up and looks at it, studies the boy carefully as if he will give up his secrets just from being examined in a picture. He is Mike’s own age, a little pale and skinny looking, staring out at Mike from the sketch roughed out in dark pencil. Mike feels like he is familiar, like this is a face he’s seen a thousand times, knows every little scar and freckle of, like looking at a photograph of an old friend from his hometown. He looks up again at the empty room that suddenly doesn’t feel empty at all.

“Hello? Are you….are you there?” he asks softly, hesitantly. He waits for a minute, cheeks hot, gradually feeling dumber and dumber to be talking to thin air. Then the dusty, unused Supercomm on his desk crackles into life, making him jump halfway to the ceiling. Mike drops the paper and races over to the desk, grabbing the walkie-talkie and hit the transceiver button. “Hello?” he asks the crumbling static, and releases the button to wait for a reply. For a while, there is nothing but white noise. Then, through the fog of crackling noise, comes a voice, faint with disuse and nerves.

“H-hi. Hi, Mike.”


End file.
